High school baseball: South Sevier bats explode to claim 2A championship

South Sevier entered the day on the outside looking in to the 2A baseball finals, as it faced a tough matchup against No. 2 seed Beaver for the chance to square off against two-time defending champion Kanab.

The Rams continued a red-hot weekend, scoring a total of 37 runs in three games to claim their first state title since 2022. They also won both of the championship games, a feat that hadn’t been accomplished since 2021.

Their foe was a familiar one, as they were the runner-up of the last two 2A playoffs, falling to Kanab both times. They knew this time would be different, even early on in the season.

South Sevier lost a regular season game to Kanab just a month ago, and head coach Eric Baker said, “Probably after that pod game that we lost… We got on the bus, and one of our boys said, ‘Never again. Not this year. They won’t get us again’. From that moment on I knew that if we ran into them, we were capable of this.”

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Two players showed up big in the final winner-take-all game for the Rams, senior leaders Bigs Northrup and Peyton Ingram.

Northrup pitched in both games on Friday to give his team a chance to keep playing. His bat showed up big on Saturday, as he had a combined seven hits and six RBIs between the three games, including a massive home run to left field.

“The focus was to go and hit the ball and win the game. No other option but to win,” Northrup said.

Ingram was huge for his team on the mound, as he pitched a complete game in the “if necessary” second game of the finals. He struck out six batters and only allowed one run to a Kanab team that was averaging 8.6 runs in the playoffs.

“That kid just comes out and does his job,” Baker said. “He’s a phenomenal baseball player but an even better human being. That kid has everything you could ever ask for as a student, as an athlete, as a kid. He’s exactly who we needed today.”

Baker and his Rams celebrated with a roaring crowd that traveled more than two hours to cheer on “their boys.”

“We told the boys, ‘It’s going to require energy. Take it where you can get it. Borrow it from the crowd, borrow it from each other, borrow it from the coaches,’” he said.

Borrow energy they did, to the tune of the school’s ninth state baseball title.